I notice there's no "or die" up there on your open. If the open fails, it will do so silently. (and nothing will get printed from a file that ain't open!)

FWIW, I'd do it this way:

open (FILE, $filename) or die "Can't open $filename: $!\n";
print $_ while (<FILE>);
close FILE;
[download]

HTH.

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor